Letters to the editor on for-profit medicine, gun vote, right to arms

It is too bad that the article “Study: Hospitals profit from mistakes” (April 18 Business Today) was buried on Page 3C. It should have been the front page’s top headline, as it has far more impact on everyone’s lives than state budget issues or even gun control.

It is too bad that the article “Study: Hospitals profit from mistakes” (April 18 Business Today) was buried on Page 3C. It should have been the front page’s top headline, as it has far more impact on everyone’s lives than state budget issues or even gun control.

The article clearly pointed out the incontrovertible evidence that for-profit health care is a complete failure as a viable delivery system and the need for a rationalized civil health care system – or at least the system for paying for health care.

There is no profit incentive at for-profit hospitals to get you better so they can stop billing you. There is no profit incentive to help prevent hospital visits that they can bill you for. There’s not even a good incentive to prevent MRSA-type hospital-transmitted infections, since they get to bill you for the diseases they gave you. Nor, in the for-profit world, is there a profit incentive to cure any disease, since the money is in the treatment (and prolongation) of diseases, not their eradication.

Why develop a cure for the common cold when there is a $50 billion-a-year business in selling symptomatic remedies? Why cure a patient when you can keep him for a few more days’ profits?

TROY DAVIS

Wichita

Bravo, senators

Our U.S. senators continue to get a bum rap for their “no” vote on the gun-control amendment (April 18 Eagle). They were not puppets of the National Rifle Association, as many articles and editorials have stated. They were not cowards, but rather brave men who stood up for your rights and mine.

More gun controls will not lead to a decrease in violence. The speed with which the gun-control issue came up after the Sandy Hook terrorism shows that gun controls are nothing more than a grandstand play – because “something must be done.”

We need to take a serious look at how to best prevent violence and, if we must change the U.S. Constitution, follow the prescribed method for so doing. “Shall not be infringed” means just that, and Kansas Sens. Jerry Moran and Pat Roberts voted the correct way.

JON E. EHRSAM

Wichita

Shame on senators

Who wouldn’t want background checks on gun purchases? People who have something to hide? Where did all this madness come from?

I’m tired of all the shooting on the news every night. Our Congress is bought and paid for by the National Rifle Association and big oil. Shame on those who voted “no.”

MARLENE HALL

Wichita

Owned by NRA

Kansas is a very red state owned by the National Rifle Association. Recent surveys have shown that 84 percent of people in the Wichita and Hutchinson area favor expanded gun background checks and 90 percent of people nationwide favor them. But the NRA rules the Kansas delegation. Supporting the NRA instead of the people of Kansas is not what our lawmakers were elected to do.

R.D. ZIMMERMAN

Wichita

People control

A letter writer is sadly mistaken in believing that the government “has no intention of taking rifles, pistols or shotguns” (“Won’t confiscate,” April 17 Letters to the Editor). There are many elements in our government that would do that in a heartbeat if they had the chance. If you doubt that, you have not paid attention to the likes of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., or New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Keeping your tools for hunting is a red herring that the gun-control crowd has used to keep people from understanding the truth. Gun control is about people control. The Second Amendment was engineered to guarantee a free society the means to resist tyranny and oppression. It has nothing to do with hunting. People in a disarmed society must bend to the will of the government when they can no longer resist.

Gun confiscation has happened in many countries, and it can happen here. Taking away the means to resist is the goal of gun control, period.

Unfortunately, society does not know how to control insane people. But pursuing the sane ones will not solve that problem.

LARRY NOVAK

Augusta

Right to nukes

I need nuclear weapons. Nowhere in the Second Amendment is the right to bear arms limited to guns. To defend myself from a government that possesses nuclear weapons, I can’t have just an AR-15 (whatever that is).

Read the Constitution and you will come to the same conclusion – that “militia” means each individual person and “well regulated” means no regulation.

Giving me (or any al-Qaida member, for that matter) unlimited power of destruction is how we “insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense” and “promote the general welfare.”

I will express this with loudspeakers in the middle of the night, because my freedom of speech can’t be regulated. If I end up in court, no judge will find me in contempt if I express myself however and whenever I want.

Our dear senators and representatives will stand by me, even if I don’t pour millions of dollars into their campaigns (like the gun manufacturers’ lobby). I’m sure they’ll be there to protect my rights.